Do I need a mobile website?

12 April 2012

We are often asked why we recommend to our clients a mobile website design. Well the latest statistics released by Ofcom in December 2010 show that the number of smartphones being used in the UK now exceeds the number of more traditional mobile phones. With over 57% of UK users owning a smartphone the evidence is clear that these are now a well established device and offer a great marketing opportunity to the forward thinking business.

The whole point of a mobile website is to make your content easier to navigate and faster to load. When we build our mobile websites we aim to have as little scrolling as possible, because when it comes to mobile websites less-is-more. We help all our clients to single out the most important reasons why visitors/clients view there standard website, and then focus on them key pages for the mobile version.

Mobile website Vs apps

A lot of clients get confused between a mobile website's and app's. The key differences are that mobile websites don’t need to be downloaded, and they are available to all brands of smartphones. However Apps can take advantage of the native handset applications like the camera, gyroscope and push notifications. Apps are very cool things to have, but they have several drawbacks. For one, you have to make an app for each platform you target. That means maintaining at least three apps; one for iPhone, one for Android, and another for Blackberry, but most importantly they need to be installed. Mobile websites don’t have any of these app problems, every modern smartphone has a browser, so everyone can view your mobile website and your entire audience is immediately just a tap away.

Still not sure about having a mobile site? Here are 3 more reasons

Smartphones are now outselling PCs

There will be more mobile vs web users in 3 years

Millions of people check e-mail daily via mobile